


thanks, killer

by Sciosa



Series: maneater [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 11:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sciosa/pseuds/Sciosa
Summary: Pickman isn’t the first of her own kind she’s ever met.





	thanks, killer

Pickman isn’t the first of her own kind she’s ever met.

She’d had several run-ins with the Phantom, back in the day. She wasn’t partial to him; they hunted the same grounds, and he was finicky and irritating and _constantly_ trying to tell her about his _feelings_. The Bugle had once misattributed one of her kills to the Phantom, which had offended _both_ of them-- he’d sent a dozen letters to the editor bitching about his ethos, and she’d very neatly piled up a selection of choice cuts from the offending reporter in a brown paper package and left them in the Bugle’s lobby-- but that was as close as they’d ever gotten to reaching an accord. When she’d finally lost her temper with him and strewn three of his “sculptures” around College Square in various states of disrepair, that had been the end of any fledgling acquaintance they might have cultivated. He had gone to ground, perhaps out of a very justifiable anxiety that she’d leave _him_ lying in pieces around College Square next, and the paper had gone on about it for weeks.

 **PHANTOM SPOOKED BY BOSTON BUTCHER?**  
**BUTCHER’S RIVALRY WITH THE FEN STREET PHANTOM FINISHED?**  
**BOSTON BUTCHER UNDISPUTED COLONIAL KILLER!**  
**NUKA-KILLER AND BOSTON BUTCHER MAKE A MEAL OF FEN STREET PHANTOM?**

And then the world had ended, and she’d never gotten a chance to decide if she was going to hunt him down or not. She supposes he’s probably dead, by now. The Nuka-Killer too, although she’d never actually _met_ him-- theirs had been a purely practical system of avoiding one another totally with arranged dead-drops and carefully managed territories. That was as close to an amicable relationship with one of her peers as she can really imagine.

So her expectations are not high when she creeps into Pickman’s Gallery, trailing a nervous MacCready, and finds almost a dozen paintings in various shades of red and several artfully-arranged corpses lying around the place.

“Wonderful,” she says, scowling at a painting with a particularly visceral texture, “Another _artist_.”

“Boss?” MacCready asks, sounding sick and slightly taken aback.

“Ugh,” she says, with great depth of feeling, “Nevermind.”

She can hear more raiders deeper in the building-- the handful who were loitering near the entrance having been very tidily dispatched by her switchblade, and a straggler picked off by MacCready’s rifle, even if it was a less-than-ideal choice for inside a building-- and normally she might leave and let this sort itself out. But the leather-faced Mayor of Goodneighbor had said “reconnaissance”, and Alice might not have gone to war her own self, but she knew very well that peeking inside and killing five people didn’t count. Also, she had just spent quite a bit of “caps” (god, she almost wished the Nuka-Killer _was_ still around, she’d have loved to know what he thought of _that_ ) hiring MacCready, and she supposed raiders probably had some valuables on their various persons. If they didn’t, they weren’t very good _raiders_ , were they?

“Loot the corpses, will you, darling?” she says, jamming a bobby pin into the door that had flummoxed the raiders, and is gratified by MacCready’s slightly shaky smile and lopsided salute. He’s a good boy. He’ll learn.

And if he doesn’t, she can always make him useful in a more round-about way. She doesn’t expect there are any meat inspectors around, these days.

The door leads to a basement, which has been thoroughly excavated into a sewer. MacCready’s rifle is not particularly valuable in these confined quarters-- it is also _very loud_ \-- and after two ricochets and watching him get locked up with a raider waving a tire-iron around for a few minutes, she relegates him to “be quiet and look pretty” duty. He accepts this with less grace than chagrin and a lot of muttering that she graciously ignores because she’s _working_. 

She’ll have to see about getting him a pistol, or perhaps a machine gun. She almost certainly has something semi-automatic back at the Red Rocket. Kellogg will know.

“You can’t hide forever, Pickman!” someone screams further in, although in tunnels like these it’s difficult to know from whence _precisely_ it’s coming. It doesn’t sound far, though.

(There’s an edge in it, restrained hysteria, that she’s very familiar with; always inspires warm, _satisfied_ pleasure in her ribcage.)

She has to half-skip half-scrabble up a bit of crumbled brickwork, which is not exactly quiet work, but the raiders are definitely louder here, loud enough to hear themselves instead of her. Once she clears the edge there’s a sudden drop and an interesting view. She skims her fingertips along the threshold, assessing the raiders and their cornered prey(?) with interest. Three scruffily-armored, extremely angry (extremely frightened) men, in a loose semi-circle around a man in what was probably a nice suit, once, with both hands raised in surrender despite his very mild smile. Pickman, she presumes.

 _Reconnaissance,_ she thinks, a savage smile cutting across her face, cat-that-caught-the-canary.

Then she jumps down, hears MacCready cut off a swear word behind her and chamber a round, takes three quick steps, and wraps her free hand around the raider’s face to stop him from half-turning while she shoves her switchblade directly up through the base of his skull. He makes a very satisfying, strangled choking sound while he drops, and then things get very busy and loud.

* * *

“I’ve been to Pickman’s,” she says, dropping onto a couch across from Hancock in a loose, boneless sprawl, her body as artfully displayed on faded cushions as bleaching bones and sleek, red meat on her table. There was hot arterial blood on her face hours ago; it’s flaking from her skin in coppery particles now. A smirk crawls across her face at irregular intervals. MacCready shuffles awkwardly in the doorway.

“That so?” Hancock says. She wonders if his voice is dry because of his personality, or his voice box. She could find out-- she could pull his larynx out of his throat and see if it’s full of dust-- no. Maybe later.

“Mmm,” she hums, flicking her gaze briefly at Farenheit before settling on making unflinching eye contact with the Mayor. His eyes are dark and liquid, difficult to track in the thin light that creeps in through the dirty, boarded windows of the Old State House. She enjoys a challenge. “Reconnaissance.”

Hancock, to her _delight_ , doesn’t rise to the bait; he slouches back into his seat, a smile that she thinks is meant to be patient but which seems more strained creating strange new shapes in his ruined face. She can’t really see his pupils, but doesn’t doubt that they’re pinned to her own. _Unblinking, we,_ she thinks, _two cobras over the same nest._ She has sharper fangs and more venom, she’s certain, but there’s satisfaction to be had in someone else’s teeth, too. In _seeing_ them.

MacCready clears his throat uncomfortably, blurts, “He was making art out of people.”

Hancock’s eyes widen slightly, skitter off of hers, his head turning to stare at MacCready. She snarls silently at his flat profile, tension working into her limbs with shivery energy. She snaps upright, claws her fingers into the limp cushion.

“He’s _mine_ ,” she snaps as Hancock draws breath, “Just stay out of his way.”

Hancock’s eyes slip back to hers, where they _belong_. There’s a tiny sliver of something light-colored in his eyes-- an iris occluded by dilated pupils and the rot in his sclera-- and she folds it up into a neat little package to keep between her empty ribs: a dead man’s eyes looking for something in hers. (A tin soldier obeying her orders. A murderer beneath her, making wounded noises. A mild smile in a blood-spattered face.)

(She has not felt her own edges so keenly since she was a child.)

“Interesting,” he breathes, as though he has uncovered a great secret. She shows him her teeth in the guise of a smile. “I’ll put the word out to avoid that place."

* * *

_Thanks, Killer_.


End file.
